“On 14th July 1959, the Turkmens in the Turkmen city Kerkuk were preparing for the first anniversary of the 1958 revolution and more than 600 Turkmen men, women and children started marching from Al-Jumhuriya street. Passing by the local Officer’s Resting House chanting Turkmen songs, they were ambushed by Kurdish militia forces established by the communist and supported by the Iraqi Communist Party.

The massacre was pre-planned. Electricity and telephone lines had both been cut off prior of the march. And the Kurds communist militia groups surrounded Kerkuk City and secured all routes in order to prevent any assistance from Turkmen villagers coming to help and rescue their brothers in Kerkuk from the massacre.

The first bullet was fired at martyr Osman Hidir, the owner of a Turkmen cafe shop, and his body was dragged savagely through the streets of Kerkuk by tying it to a car. According to my father and very close relatives who participated in the march, Kurdish communists were holding ropes in their hands and started tightening the hands and feet of the Turkmens behind cars and pulling them in the streets of Kerkuk City.”

Witnesses say that the Kurds were shouting: “One kilo of Turkmen meat for fifty cents“.

Barzani’s peshmerga and Iraqi soldiers also attacked the houses belonging to Turkmens and workplaces belonging to Turkmens were plundered by the Kurds.